Hitting technology could help baseballs struggling lineups

News Summary

  • Some of baseball’s brightest minds are working on the gap between the technology available to Anderson and other big league hitters, and the technology behind a pitching renaissance.Forget about tinkering in the batting cage, looking for a lost swing.
  • Some even predict a future where most of the game’s top hitters pick from an array of specialized bats depending on specific matchups or situations — almost like golfers deciding between a pitching wedge and 9-iron.They need all the help they can get.
  • Several stars last season used bats with hockey-puck shaped knobs that they tried in Baton Rouge.“We’re building bats to combat pitch design,” said Micah Gibbs, the director of player development at the lab.
  • That system and the resulting data gets a significant upgrade this summer with the addition of five high-frame-rate cameras at the majors’ 30 ballparks and Salt Rivers Fields in Arizona.The HFR cameras, which were tested by MLB last season, can capture video at 300 frames per second.
  • We’ll build bats for it.’”Gibbs said he sees a day coming when it’s common practice for players to use multiple variations of bats in a single game.
  • It doesn’t make a ton of sense, and I want every hitter that comes in to be able to go away with that confidence of knowing that when they get in the box, they have the best tool for them.” ___Follow Jay Cohen at https://twitter.com/jcohenap___AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
By JAY COHEN AP Baseball WriterGLENDALE, Ariz. (AP) Tim Anderson wanted to study his swing. After a season hampered by groin and hand injuries, the Chicago White Sox shortstop wanted to build a m [+8109 chars]